Barrasso to Biden’s HHS Secretary: Why Should American Taxpayers Pay Health Care Bills for Illegal Immigrants?

Floor Speech

“I want to turn to the crisis at the southern border and how it's overwhelming our health care system here in the United States.

We've seen reported in the news and on television, hospitals in sanctuary cities right now — New York City, Denver, San Diego, Chicago, Boston — tell us that they're at risk of collapsing financially due to the overwhelming number of illegal migrants flooding their emergency rooms and their clinics, who are essentially getting free care, having the American people pay for their care.

A clinic in Chicago reported seeing nearly 16,000 migrants last year — illegal immigrants. The cost of their care totals over $30 million. This is what the hospital is reporting, paid for by American taxpayers.

Denver Health was in the headlines in 2023 reporting over 20,000 hospital visits from migrants. The hospital is now — not surprisingly — in financial distress.

These hospitals are now asking the federal government to bail them out. And it's a completely Democrat-caused failure to enforce the law at the southern border.

Can you please explain why it is the responsibility of hardworking American taxpayers to foot the bill for all of this care for people — 9 million now from all across the world — who have flooded their way into the United States?

It's not hard to find stories about hospitals in one sanctuary city after another saying 'we are overwhelmed with the number of people that we're treating and have no way to recover the costs other than to turn to the American taxpayers.

The federal government doesn't pay for the health care of every legal U.S. citizen, but it's in the position now of having to do it for all these illegal immigrants.

Why should the American citizens be forced to pay for illegal migrants to receive this same care for free? Because that's what's happening.

You are aware that when a hospital is inundated with people who are not paying, they have to shift the cost to the people that are paying, and that's what's happening right now all across the country, and specifically at so many of the sanctuary cities.

I'm going to talk to you a little bit about something that Senators Langford and Crapo asked about as well, and that's the nursing home staffing ratio requirements.

Specifically, your department is proposing a rule on nursing home staffing ratios requiring a registered nurse to be present 24 hours a day. Currently it's required for eight hours, with CNA hours per patient per day increasing.

And the hardship exemption for rural communities who can't find people to hire — even though they try very hard — is requiring much more paperwork. Most of the Wyoming nursing homes that I talk to, they would have to actually hire additional staff, not in addition to taking care of the patients, but to just fill out the paperwork that your department is requiring.

We had concerns, we expressed them to the director of Medicare and Medicaid, Brooks-LaSure. She shared that Medicare and Medicaid have committed $75 million to support nursing staff in nursing homes.

How do you plan for these funds to reach these rural communities that are really getting hammered by these additional rules? About four out of five nursing homes say, 'we can't comply' with what the administration is now forcing upon them all across the country.

Only one in five nursing homes can meet the proposed requirements — even those trying to hire people can't find people to fulfill it. So four out of five nursing homes are going to be out of compliance with administration rules.

And apparently what you're saying is that all of these nursing homes are right now incompetent to provide care, but I think they're still providing pretty good care today.”

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